ORCA and Tanner

Oh my goodness... busiest 2 weeks of my life and I'm pretty sure I won't have any time to document them tomorrow. So even though I'm about to collapse forward onto my computer I'll try and give you the rundown:

First things first. Tanner and I are official. That happened last Saturday night, and right after we decided to date exclusively he asked me if I wanted to go meet his family with him the next day. Sunday morning I sang in church (How Can I Keep from Singing again), and it wasn't as pretty as the practice, which was disappointing. Could have been worse though. Right after Sunday school his Mom picked us up and she had Tanner's two little sisters with her... so cute! We drove to Bountiful where we slipped into the church meeting, joining the rest of Tanner's family. In Sunday school the teacher looked at Tanner and me and said "Welcome Brother and Sister..." waiting expectantly. Tanner quickly introduced himself as Tanner Hardison, then introduced me as his girlfriend Margaret Ebeling. Kind of weird to hear my new "title" for the first time in Sunday school :-). After church the whole family went to the park where we celebrated Hannah's (I really hope I remembered the right name) birthday with some good food and presents, and I met the whole family including one set of grandparents. It was a lot of fun, but I was pretty exhausted by the time we finally made it home.

Next huge thing going on in my life: ORCA. Professor James gave me a ton of reading and research to do last Thursday to prepare me to write my project proposal. Of course, they were some of the busiest weeks of the entire semester. I did read, but not as thoroughly as I would have liked. This Thursday we had a second meeting, and she'd like me to have a very solid draft done by Thursday. I've got a 330 test to grade after Wednesday, a huge civilization test to study for and tons of other homework to do. It's going to take a miracle this week, but with all the conference talks today about not letting anything bring you down, I think I can just have faith and move on. If all goes well with ORCA though, I'll be coauthoring the introduction to a section on Elisa von der Recke's travel journals (yes, I'll be published!!), plus I'll be able to use it (with a little extra work) for my capstone paper, and with a lot of extra work for my honors thesis. Professor James said they'd then publish my capstone paper as well since it has so much to do with the topic, so I'll be published twice!! Professor Kelling said with the kind of research experience I'll be getting he thinks I might be ready then to move straight to a PHD and skip my masters, and that I could probably apply and be accepted anywhere I want. So cool... sounds just too good to be true.

It's midnight... those are the current highlights... maybe I'll have time for more tomorrow.

Miss and love you all!

Margaret